accent. The line was clear, so the call was probably local.
“This is Christoph, at Kurzmann Buchladen.” A bookstore. “I have your special order, delivered today in the name of Dewey.”
There it was, the promised message, although I hadn’t expected it so soon.
“A delivery? Now?”
“We are closed Sunday. We open tomorrow at eight o’clock. On Johannesgasse.”
“Where did you-?”
He’d hung up. When I turned around my father was staring from the doorway.
“Was that Kurzmann’s?”
“How’d you know?”
“I’m an old customer, although not for years. Did you special-order something?”
“No.”
I toyed with trying the name “Dewey” on him, but if I told him that, then I would have to explain more than I was ready to. His reaction to the phone call had already aroused my suspicion, and, judging from what he said next, my reaction had aroused his.
“Do they have something for you?”
“So he said.”
“And you’re sure you didn’t order anything? You’re positive that that call came from completely out of the blue?”
“Yes.”
He eyed me dubiously, probably because of the guilty look on my face. But he was hiding something, too. We moved back to the living room and, like boxers returning to the ring, took up our previous positions. Then, for whatever reason-the strange call, the jet lag, or even the sight of all those spy novels, these words spilled from my mouth:
“This is almost like something out of a Lemaster novel, don’t you think?”
He reacted as if I’d slapped him.
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because it is? Do you remember any scenes like this? Or could I be thinking of another author?”
“All right, Bill. Enough.” His tone was stern, as if I was in high school again and he’d just found a roach clip in the bathroom. “Who told you to ask me these questions?”
“Nobody.”
“Likely story, but I suppose after that wacky funeral nothing should surprise me. I did wonder what sort of repercussions would come out of that unholy mix of people, but I never imagined you’d be part of them. So, who did you speak to before flying over here? Someone at State? Or maybe even the Agency?”
“The CIA?” I didn’t have to fake sounding incredulous because I really was.
“So the Agency, then. Is that the real reason you’re here?”
“Dad, no one told me to ask you anything.” He gave me a long look, unconvinced. I stared right back. “Have I ever been able to lie to your face and get away with it?”
“No.” He seemed to relax. “But something made you ask.”
“My imagination, probably. Why’d you assume I’d been talking to the Agency?”
“Ask Christoph.”
“The bookseller?”
“When you pick up the delivery. Ask him why I’d think this was some sort of job for the Agency. Ask him as well who else has been in touch with him on this matter, and for God’s sake do it discreetly. Then tell me what he says.”
“You’re serious?”
“Absolutely. And, son?”
“Yes?”
“If you’re thinking this is some sort of lark, or intellectual exercise, then I urge you to disabuse yourself of that notion straightaway.”
“Based on what?”
“That’s all I’m going to say until you’ve talked to Christoph.”
At first I thought he was bluffing, but as the silence lengthened, Dad stared out the window into the gray afternoon. I coughed and picked up my coffee cup, but it was empty, so I set it back down, uncertain what to do next. We still had five hours to kill before dinner, eighteen before the bookstore opened. It was going to be a long and awkward afternoon.
7
I arrived five minutes early, only to find that Kurzmann Buchladen was already open for business. There was even a customer ahead of me, a dissipated-looking fellow in a long wool coat and a floppy brown hat that slouched on his head like a dumpling. I took him at first for a wino, then noticed how assiduously he was working the shelves, like an ingenious piece of farm machinery that can simultaneously harrow, weed, and cultivate. Three volumes were tucked beneath his left arm and a fourth bulged from a coat pocket. He looked up as the door shut behind me, jingling a bell. Then he wrote me off as inconsequential and resumed his harvesting.
I looked around. Sellers of rare and antiquarian books are often messy housekeepers, but even by those standards the conditions at Kurzmann’s were unforgivable. The framed prints and maps hanging from the walls were dusty and crooked. Several had cracked glass. The watermarked ceiling was beaded with moisture-a death sentence for all that cloth and pulp below-and the musty air smelled faintly of cat urine. Mounted on the wall behind the register was an ancient color engraving of Prince Metternich, Europe’s original celebrity power broker, the Kissinger of his day. He glared out at the merchandise in apparent disdain.
Creaking floorboards drew my attention toward the back, where a short balding man in an unbuttoned vest emerged from the gloom. A tape measure was draped around his neck, as if he were a tailor who’d been called away from his sewing.
“Yes?” he asked in English, pegging my nationality. He ignored the other customer, and looked surprised by my presence, which was odd given yesterday’s phone call.
“Are you Christoph?” I asked in German. He answered in the same language.
“Do I know you?”
“You telephoned yesterday about a special order. I’m Bill Cage.”
A book slapped to the floor in the aisle where the other man was browsing. He snatched up the dropped copy and glanced my way with a gleam in his eye, or maybe I imagined it. The only noise was the muffled sound of rush hour traffic from the Ring, half a block away.
“Ah, yes.” Christoph said. He shuffled toward the register. “Your book has arrived.”
“For someone named Dewey, you said.”
He shot me a sidelong glance but said nothing.
“Well, is it or not?”
Stopping behind the counter, he glanced toward the harvester, who was working at a more deliberate pace than before. Then he glared at me and hissed beneath his breath: “Do you always conduct your business so sloppily?”
He quickly turned away and, with some effort, climbed a stepladder to a long shelf stuffed with books. Yellow labels scribbled with names poked from every copy, although the amount of dust suggested that most of the customers had either died or forgotten their orders. But my parcel looked clean as a whistle when he pulled it free. It was wrapped in brown butcher paper and tied with a crisscross of white string. Something about this presentation stirred a distant memory which I couldn’t quite place. The name “Dewey” was written on the butcher paper in black ink. Christoph handed it over, still glaring.
“Fifty euros, Mr…?”
